


no sunrise as constant

by to-the-voiceless (larkgrace)



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Au Ra Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Established Relationship, F/M, You can't change my mind, aymeric's love language is food, local warrior of light flexes on ishgard's crafters, local wol also has food allergies because if god won't nerf her i WILL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29890116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkgrace/pseuds/to-the-voiceless
Summary: She sat up, pressing their joined hands tighter against her chest. Her eyes glowed more visibly now, turned away from the window, her limbal rings shimmering blue in the pale winter sun. “You madeplant cheese?”“It made for an interesting challenge,” he said. “I did try some. It turned out quite well, if I may brag a bit.”“You are too good to me,” she said.“You have spent an entire morning fixing my window," he told her. "I assure you it is the least I can do."--A new normal in Borel Manor.
Relationships: Aymeric de Borel/Warrior of Light
Kudos: 16





	no sunrise as constant

**Author's Note:**

> a very, _very_ old fic tidied up for wolmeric week day 6: food! because i have feelings about food being aymeric's love language. and also about hanami having food allergies. and how those things intersect in their daily lives. i could write an essay but instead i wrote this

Aymeric deposited the bubbling bowls of soup on the kitchen counter, unwound the dishtowel that had been protecting his hands from the screaming-hot ceramic, and leaned over on his elbows to inspect each of them. Baked onion soup was a favorite dish of his, good for cold days and relatively quick to make, especially if he used leftover bread from breakfast. The bowls were near-identical, golden chicken broth and diced onions still simmering under a thick layer of cheese and a just-toasted slice of bread. Hanami’s soup was a good deal more _orange_ than his own, but he’d been forced to try a zucchini-based plant cheese, and despite its unsettling color it tasted fine, in his opinion. (It also hadn’t _burned,_ which allayed his chief concern with the concept.) The whole affair smelled quite appetizing, though by his estimation it was hard to go wrong with baked soups of any kind; the zucchini version lacked the...funk, he supposed, of the aldgoat cheese he’d used to top his own bowl, but overall Aymeric was quite proud of himself.

He folded the dishtowel on the counter, shut the grate covering the front of the stove, and set off to check on Hanami.

The afternoon before had brought a hailstorm to Ishgard, and bad luck had brought a particularly hefty chunk of ice into contact with his study window—Aymeric had noticed that same evening, walking through on his way to draw the curtains, the massive crack splitting one of the panes of the lone window. The draft wasn’t terrible, but the damage would hardly undo itself, and when he’d mused to Hanami that he would have to find an artisan to replace the glass she had given him a look somewhere between bafflement and offense and said _Why?_

He’d woken that morning to find her gone, had seen her return after his breakfast with fresh sheets of glass balanced carefully on her palms, and she had proceeded to shoo him from the study as she rolled up her shirtsleeves. He’d dared to poke his head in as he’d puttered about the Manor—he had no pressing business at the Congregation, and the House of Lords was on a winter recess, leaving him with a pile of paperwork still weighed down on his momentarily inaccessible desk and a restless desire to do _something_ productive—so he’d busied himself with tending the little herb garden Hanami kept in one of the spare rooms, and then with making lunch after the smell of fresh thyme had given him a craving for soup. He’d caught glimpses of her prising the shards of broken glass from the window frame, then pulling out the intact panes out as well— _the old glass is streaked,_ she’d answered him upon questioning, _it will not match—_ and then she had flicked her hands at him, motioning for him to leave her to her work, and he had obeyed and retreated to the cellar to hunt down onions.

The stair treads groaned under his feet as he ascended to the second floor. Hanami had stoked the fire and tacked a thick blanket over the open window when he’d last passed by, but he still felt the chill in the hall when he stopped outside the door, cracked open to reveal the scattered tools and bottles spread across the rug. 

Hanami was kneeling in front of the window, perched on the folded quilt. The window was once again intact, the new glass remarkably clear in the rare winter sunlight, not yet old enough to have even developed a layer of frost. Her shirt was rumpled, undyed linen, too large in the torso and streaked with remains of polish and powders—her work shirt, though he hardly saw her wear it; she reserved it only for those projects she deemed _messy,_ and such work usually took her out of the Manor. Her pants were similarly stained, baggy and patched, her work boots worn smooth at the rubber soles. The spines of her tail dragged on the quilt where the very tip swayed, slow and steady as a metronome, as much a sign of her preoccupation as the intent curl of her shoulders. With her back to the room, he couldn’t see her face, but he spotted the kerchief she’d previously tied over her nose and mouth hanging loose around her neck, her fingers caked with some sort of putty as she used a thick knife to smear the same substance along the join of glass and frame.

He waited, arms crossed as he leaned on the doorjamb, for her to finish smoothing the putty across the last side of the frame. When she scraped the excess into the jar at her knee, he said, “Hanami.”

“Hn,” she grunted, not looking up, and reached for a stoppered bottle, producing a tattered rag from one of the many pockets of her pants.

_“Hanami.”_ When she continued to ignore him, pulling the stopper free, he stifled a sigh. 

Four quick strides saw him to the far side of the room, where he dropped to his knees and leaned forward, tucking his fingers into her belt loops as he pressed a firm kiss to the spot behind her horn where he _knew_ she was most ticklish. 

She jumped in shock, the rag fluttering to the floor, and it was only by virtue of her thumb over the neck of the bottle that the liquid she was holding did not follow. Her tail lashed the outside of his thigh, thick muscle and scale jerking in displeasure, and he had to duck to avoid her horn as she turned as far as the circle of his arms would allow and hissed, _“Aymeric!”_

Her hair was spotted with putty, her cheeks growing flushed, her eyes burning almost white in the afternoon sun, beautiful and blazing in the light from the window. The white of her scales caught the sunlight like a marble effigy, stark and glowing against the rich tan of her skin.

“Hana-mi,” he said, unable to disguise the smile in his voice, allowing his amusement to stretch the syllables of her name. He leaned back in, pressing his mouth to the join of her neck and shoulder, just exposed by the wide collar of her shirt, reaching with his thumbs to trace the curves of her hip bones over the waist of her pants. She smelled of sweat and dust and static, like an oncoming summer storm. When he had first begun to meet with her, following her work with Artoirel in the highlands, he had been both startled and mortified when she had thoughtlessly corrected his pronunciation of her name— _Hana-mi, not Hah-naaaah-meee,_ she had said, snappish and impatient, smearing the vowels in mockery of his accent. _No one says it right here._ It had only been moons later, arm-in-arm as they wandered through Saint Valeroyant’s forum, surrounded by celebratory bowers for Saint Reinette’s feast, that she had relented to explain. _It is not only sounds, it is a word. It is like saying Con-gregation. It is not right._ When he had pressed, she had traced the characters in a fine layer of frost covering the stones of a nearby fountain, the tip of her finger an inelegant substitute for a stylus: _‘Hana,’ for flowers, and ‘mi,’ for seeing._

He had thought it oddly fitting at the time, with her hair dyed the color of pale roses. He knew better now; she was beautiful, not like a flower blossom or delicate falling petals, but like a force of nature, a lightning strike and the slow roll of thunder that rattled the breath in his lungs after. Relentless as a storm and constant as the sunrise.

“You’ve been at this for nearly four bells,” he said, the scrape of her scales tickling his mouth where it pressed against her neck. “Come and eat, love. I very much doubt the window will escape without your supervision.”

“You _startled_ me,” she groused, though as she set the bottle back on the floor he felt the muscles of her back unclench, her tail relaxing to lie along the line of his leg as she slumped backwards into his arms. Her free hand caught one of his own and pulled it away from her belt, guiding his fingers to rest over her heart, adrenaline setting her pulse racing against the underside of her ribs. She laced her own fingers through his. 

“My apologies. You seemed quite preoccupied.” Their lunch would be cooling downstairs, but it was not urgent enough to keep him from sitting back on his heels, winding his arm around her to tug her back into his lap. “I was hoping I had caught you at a good time to take a break.”

“...I do need to let the caulk dry,” she admitted, and turned a little more, draping her legs crossways across his own to tuck herself back against his shoulder. “I can stop for a little while.”

“Wonderful.” He raised his head enough to press a swift kiss to the curl of her horn—he could only reach the metal prosthetic on this side, the metal chilled against his skin—and when she craned her neck, he met her with a kiss to the corner of her mouth. She shuffled in his lap, turning to hook her hand over his shoulder, tilting her head to kiss him properly before she ducked forward to rest her forehead against his neck.

“You smell nice,” she said, with a grunt as she unfolded her legs.

“You,” he said, with a swift kiss to her hair, “smell lunch. I made soup.”

He felt her ribs expand as she tucked her nose into his collar, breathing deep—likely smelling the residue where he’d splashed the broth on himself by mistake. “Onion?”

“It should just be cool enough to eat.” He traced his thumb up the ridges of the base of her spine, squeezing her fingers where she still held his hand over her heart. “Yours also has the first attempt at a vegetable cheese. If it is not to your liking, there is enough broth left over that I can make another bowl without it.” 

She sat up, pressing their joined hands tighter against her chest. Her eyes glowed more visibly now, turned away from the window, her limbal rings shimmering blue in the pale winter sun. “You made _plant cheese?”_

“It made for an interesting challenge,” he said. “I did try some. It turned out quite well, if I may brag a bit.”

Hanami finally released his hand, bringing both of hers up to cup his jaw. “You are too good to me,” she said, quiet as he’d ever heard her, and if he didn’t know better he might have mistaken the sharp curl of her mouth and the tension in her eyes for anger.

He reached around with both arms to cup her body close. “You have spent an entire morning fixing my window. I assure you it is the least I can do. Shall we go warm you up?”

“I think at this point it is _our_ window,” she said, somewhat absentminded as she dusted herself off and made to stand, even as the casual correction threatened to drive him blissfully mad. “I like working in here, too.”

Hanami did not quite make it to her feet, as Aymeric pulled her back down onto his lap, allowing the momentum to knock them both to sprawl on the floor, his buoyant heart smothering the dull ache of the landing.

The soup could stand to cool a while longer.


End file.
